Castaway
by SapphireEyeoftheRaven
Summary: "One more miracle. Just for me, Sherlock. Don't be - dead." But that's about to change... very soon". Out there, Sherlock Holmes lurks, waiting... With Moriarty's criminal web destroyed he can return to London, return to his work, his John. But, let's face it, he'll want to pick the right moment and make a big entrance. Sherlock Holmes hides in the shadows, watches, and waits...


**This is just a tiny one-shot that I wrote in the early hours of this morning. Happy New Year all, by the way. I wrote it in 15minutes so it's a bit odd. Please review and tell me what you think of the products of my coffee-addled mind! ~ Raven**

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Castaway

Here is a story – a very short story, may I add – about an unknown hero. Not because he is "just a civilian" whose name has never cropped up heroically in his entire life, but because this man, this brilliant, eccentric, rude, arrogant, chastising, selfish man risked his life to save the people he _chose _to love. One could say that Sherlock Holmes had changed his opinion of life, but then one would be lying and we would all be fools. Once a man like Sherlock Holmes has decided something, he will never change his mind.

This may be so, but why, then, is a lone figure in a black coat sitting on a park bench near the Jubilee Line? What does he have to do with this tale? Ah, this is Sherlock Holmes, our man of the hour (or past two years, as such). His eyes are glued to a window, set deeply into the block of flats. People have tried to personalize their own little living-spaces (placing green pot-plants on the inner windowsills or putting out little wooden figures on their balconies), but this fails immensely to draw even the least astute observer aside from the fact that they are all the same. A mass-produced block of flats, there simply to make money. There is a sandy-haired man in that flat, one with eyes that sparkle with the blue of a Mediterranean ocean, and one who used to have the most friendly, charming smile. Not any more. Now his hair is greyer and thinning, his eyes blank and hollow, darkened and carved into with worry.

The man on the bench sighs wearily. Ebony curls tickle the side of a jutting, pale cheekbone in the heavy wind, rain-drenched and sopping wet. Water cascades down the back of his neck, soaking the inside of his shirt back and black woollen Belstaff coat. The new cashmere scarf he wears proudly is stuck to his neck, and his palms are rain-slicked as he reaches up to fix it slightly, like it's a bandana slung round the neck of a black-and-white film cowboy.

The man looks more of a castaway than our aristocratic hero.

And, – according to the now deceased Jim Moriarty – he is.

'I need a cigarette,' the raven-haired man says, more to London at large than to himself, his shaking hands fumbling in his pockets as he pulls out an expensive twenty-pack. Mycroft has stopped even bothering to tell Sherlock not to smoke, that it's bad for him, that he'll die, because Sherlock always argued that it would only kill him faster. Sherlock's thumb slides over the lighter, once… twice… three times… four times… before he reaches down to wipe his shaking, wet, cold hands on his blazer. Then, he gently plucks the ornate object from his other hand and lights the cigarette he has perched between his chapped lips with ease. Sherlock takes a long drag before breathing out shakily. 'Ahh... That's much better.'

He takes another lungful of his cigarette, sucking the addictive smoke into his battered body and sighing contentedly. _Wait a minute – Ugh. Low-Tar._

Somewhere in the distant West, Big Ben chimes hollowly, each blow to the bell reverberating off a brass interior dully. Because, as much as people will pop champagne, or make resolutions, it will all be the same. Another year, and nothing changes. The wheel turns, and nothing is ever new.

Not this year, though, because finally, John Watson will get his miracle. He would get the one thing he dreamed of for nearly two years of his life. _"One more miracle. Just for me, Sherlock. Don't be – dead."_ All of that is about to change… _very_ soon.

Sherlock Holmes looks down at the cigarette he holds in those long, spidery digits disgustedly, as if it is something he has found on the bottom of his shoe. And in quick realisation, it does seem to have the worth of rat poison and tar that you would find on London's streets any day – not even just in back-alleys where the ice-eyed man used to often skulk. _Who even uses low-tar, anyway? _He throws the white stick down onto the gum-littered pavement before daintily grinding it into the ground with the bottom of a patent, black-clad heel. He glances up at the window one last time as he stands, the dry patch where he was sitting now given full access to for the elements. Rain spatters the varnished wood heavily and in milliseconds there is not even a dry space left.

'Merry Christmas, John Watson,' the man whispers slowly, as the rain thunders down, beating upon his haggard features. 'And a Happy New Year.'


End file.
